Anger

"With gentleness, overcome anger. With Generosity, overcome meanness. With truth, overcome deceit." - the Buddha

"If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right." - Jerry Seinfeld


In the opposite episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza has an epiphany as he contemplate his dissatisfaction of where he is in his life: he always does the opposite of what he should do, and only recognizes it after the fact.  His friend Jerry encourages him to live his life doing the opposite of what he thinks he should do, and the end result is that for a brief moment, George's life greatly improves.  Years later, the actor who played George is regularly approached by people who have applied this to their own lives with actual success (at least according to the bonus features in the deluxe DVD collection).

When we act in anger, are mean spirited, or dishonest, it is generally without thought. It's often a gut reaction to a difficult, uncomfortable, or frustrating situation. We all do it. If our dog/wife/child/boss/the driver in the other lane bark/nag/have a tantrum/make unrealistic demands/cut us off, it's hard to not go right to our angry place. It's almost automatic. Most of us then take a next step and with varying degrees of success, get ourselves out of that place. We cool down. We give ourselves a time-out. Once we are calm again, we tend to act in a way that is the "opposite" of what our initial impulse was. Indeed, if we don't go through that process of resetting and cooling down, we get stuck in an angry loop that is hard to get out of. It's why we bear grudges and have feuds. How much better would it be if every time we were triggered by something that is upsetting, that gets us angry, if we immediately did the opposite of how we want to react in the heat of the moment? That, I believe, is the whole point of this particular Dhammapada passage. So, the next time you feel yourself getting pulled into that dark place, remember to do the opposite.